Pilgrimage: A Journey of Transformation

Day 6 – Estella to Los Arcos

The Walk

The walk from Estella to Los Arcos is a great walk. The first stop is the Monastery of Irache, which is a Benedictine monastery dating from the 8th century. Next to the monastery is a winery, called Bodegas Irache. Bodegas Irache is known for its wine fountain located in a wall along the Camino trail. Pilgrims take the shell they carry on their backpack and use it to get a taste of wine from the fountain. Next to the winery is a metal artist that sells lovely metal sculptures.

After enjoying a sip of wine and the metal art, I started walking to the village of Villamayor de Monjardín. It looks like a bit of a climb, but it’s not, and the view descending from the village is great. You can stop in Monjardín or the little village before to get a bocadillo for the day. A word to the wise – there is no place to stop after Villamayor de Monjardín. Although it is not a difficult walk, you need to walk about 11 kilometers on a dirt road without a stop until you reach Los Arcos. There is one place where the road to Luquin connects with the Camino – maybe 2 kilometers after Villamayor – which is your last opportunity to call a taxi if you are having difficulty with the walk.

Rediscovering the Heart of My Christian Faith

During this part of my Camino walk, I am thinking about how I can reflect God into the world. So many of my friends reject Christianity because they experience Christianity as a religion that reflects judgment and anger into the world. I see that too. But that is not my faith. My faith connects me to the spirituality of the Benedictines, which is centered on community and providing welcome. This spirituality I find when I study the faith of the early Christians – and in the letters of Paul. So, on this part of our Camino, the focus will be on discovering the heart of Christianity.

People forget that early Christianity was a religion of outsiders. The early churches began as small communities of migrants that brought their faith from their home communities and worked to create a feeling of home and family for other migrants. It was these connections between different groups of people that allows for the growth of the Christian faith.¹ It reminds us that true evangelization does not come from preaching, but through positive relationships with Christian believers.

The importance of community and welcome to our faith shows up in the letters of Saint Paul. In his letter to the Romans, Paul believes that baptism brings Christians into a new creation by the Spirit.² More importantly, Paul tells us that if we allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit, we are all of one family. We are all children of God. As Paul describes it in Romans, we have received “a spirit of adoption” and we are all God’s heirs.³ By writing that we are not only children of God, but His heirs, Paul is showing that we are all equal by virtue of our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ.⁴ Not responding to others with welcome would be contrary to Paul’s notion that we are all part of the same family.

Walking the Camino gives us the opportunity to be a part of the “Community of the Camino.” It gives us an opportunity to provide welcome to everyone we meet on the trail. On my walk, I spent time with a woman from Spain who told me all about the area where we were walking. I also walked with someone who made his living offering self-help seminars based on Luke 6:31: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It is good to walk the Camino in a way that allows you to be open to others – which is good practice for everyday life.

The heart of Christianity is creating within the World “a united fellowship that can worship with one heart and voice.”⁵ Melding the different cultural traditions into a mutual welcome and shared worship is what is intended through Christian worship to give glory to God.⁶ It is not always easy to live our lives in a way that meets this standard. But every morning before we start our journey for the day (whether walking the Camino or living our daily life) we can commit the day ahead to this goal.

Prayer of Saint Paul

The words of Saint Paul can be used each morning as our prayer to provide welcome and community each day:

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2021) 145. ↩︎
2. N.T. Wright and Michael F Bird, The New Testament in its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (London, Great Britain: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 2019) 519. ↩︎
3. Rom. 8:14-17. ↩︎
4. Shelia E. McGinn, “Romans,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, Third Fully Revised Edition (John J. Collins, Gina Hens-Piazza, Barbara OP, Donald Senior CP eds.  London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2022) 1565, 1566. ↩︎
5. Wright and Bird, The New Testament in Its World, 524, citing Rom. 15:6. ↩︎
6. Wright and Bird, The New Testament in Its World, 524. ↩︎
7. Rom. 15:5-6. ↩︎